Findings of the Administrative Organizational Review Committee By Leonard Zwelling March 27, 2013 How’s that for a title? Well, it’s spring and we need some renewal and rebirth. The Easter bunny is coming on Sunday, the Passover matzos were eaten last night and then there are eggs, admittedly more colorful for the Christians...

March 21, 2013

5 mins

A Letter From the Front Lines March 21, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling “One must question the employer-employee relationship of the medical staff and the hospital administration. What will happen to the already fragile balance between quality patient care, the fair treatment of the medical staff and hospital profit? Will your average hospital administrator or...

March 20, 2013

4 mins

Thinking Small March 20, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling At the Faculty Senate meeting last evening, a new chair-elect was named. He is Gary Whitman of Diagnostic Imaging. I do not know him myself, but his videotaped address before the voting was extremely polished and well considered. It was highlighted by his simple, succinct message:...

March 19, 2013

1 min

WSJ Letter: The following letter is up on the WSJ site in response to an op-ed published last week: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578360584086516100.html This is a horror story of a pediatric oncologist wrongly convicted of a crime in absentia and then detained when passing through the UAE on his way back to South Africa from a family wedding...

March 16, 2013

1 min

From Gail Collins’ column in NY Times today about our newly-elected Senator Ted Cruz and his truly juvenile interaction with Senator Diane Feinstein over gun control this week: “If you combine a lack of a sense of humor with an absence of humility and then stir in a cup of self-righteousness, you are definitely not...

March 13, 2013

4 mins

Debits and Credits March 13, 2012 By Leonard Zwelling This is really easy. The first day in my Accounting 101 class in business school they taught us about debits and credits—what comes in (a plus asset) and what goes out (a plus liability). It is considered favorable if the amount that comes in...

March 11, 2013

5 mins

Let’s Be Prepared March 11, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling The email was beamed out over the institutional system. The Faculty Senate was sponsoring yet another Faculty Forum, this one on Clinical Productivity and Institutional Finances. My guess is that what this is really about is trying to get an explanation from the leadership team...

March 7, 2013

3 mins

The Time Magazine Article and the President’s Response By Len Zwelling The Bitter Pill by Steven Brill was an eye-opening article in Time Magazine for some. But what was in this piece should have come as no surprise to anyone at MD Anderson. My interpretation of the Brill article is: 1. Charges for...

March 5, 2013

4 mins

The Hard Task of Representing the Faculty March 4, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling Mia Love is the young (37) mayor of Sarasota Springs, Utah. She is a conservative Republican, African-American, Mormon and an articulate spokesperson for the right. (It’s a great country!). She appeared on ABC’s This Week on March 3 and had a rather...

March 5, 2013

3 mins

A Kind of Madness March 3, 2013 By Leonard Zwelling, MD, MBA In her column in the Wall Street Journal on March 2, Peggy Noonan described a White House that has grown more and more out of touch with reality. She accuses the Obama Administration of overreaching, imperiousness and being overly full of itself. She...